Jobs had right idea, say HK cancer experts

In life, Steve Jobs revolutionised the computing and media industries. Then, while dying from pancreatic cancer, he helped his doctors pioneer treatments that, only a few years ago, might have sounded like science fiction.

One key treatment used on Jobs, called molecular targeted therapy, is already under research in Hong Kong and will be available to hospital patients here early next year.

After his cancer diagnosis in 2004, Jobs first tried alternative medical approaches. But once he decided on mainstream cancer treatment, he pushed his doctors to experiment at the limits and frontiers of contemporary medical science.

He spent more than US$100,000 to have DNA sequencing performed both on his normal DNA and that of his tumours. Knowing the unique genetic and molecular signature of Jobs' tumours enabled his doctors to pick specific drugs that directly targeted the defective molecular pathways that caused his cancer cells to grow abnormally.

The goal was to change Jobs' pancreatic cancer from a killer into something manageable. His biographer, Walter Isaacson, wrote of a day soon when such cancers will 'be considered a manageable chronic disease, which could be kept at bay until the patient died of something else.'

In Hong Kong, the DNA technology for diagnosing disease and detecting mutating bacteria is already being used by researchers at the University of Hong Kong and Chinese University.